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Remote Instrumentation and Collaboration Environment (RICE)

RICE is a collaboration tool software that supports use-cases in remote instrumentation sessions. It can be used by instructors and researchers to train students or conduct research on computer-controlled scientific instruments (e.g. electron microscopes, NMRs, telescopes) from remote locations on the Internet. The RICE software integrates instruments, compute, and storage resources via custom-built VNC solutions and web-services. It provides real-time multi-site collaboration (instant messaging, user presence status, and instrument control-lock passing) along with centralized handling of user accounts/privileges, and data for remote analytics. RICE also has a network health (e.g. latency, packet loss) monitoring feature that warns and blocks instrument user?s control-actions during impending and extreme network congestion periods to avoid inadvertent instrument damage. "Proof-of-concept" versions of RICE are being customized to support idiosyncrasies of different high-end multi-million-dollar instruments such as the 850 MHz NMR at Miami University, a Raman-FTIR Micro-Spectrometer at The Ohio State University, and a Scanning Electron Microscope at The Ohio State University.

Figure 1: Cyber-enabled 850 MHz NMR at Miami University

Figure 2: Cyber-enabled Raman-FTIR Microprobe Instrument at The Ohio State University